Two Poems

Where Does Autumn Descend to?

Where Does Autumn Descend to?
What does it look for under things?
Why does it drag down all the colors
as if it must fade whatever falls?

And where do we descend to
like small portable autumns?
Where do we go down to even though
autumn ends?
What disordered light
undermines our foundations or erases
them?
Or does life lack foundations
and light only swim in emptiness?

Autumn pulls us
toward a depth that doesn’t exist.
All the while
we continue looking up toward a height
that exists even less.

Loving Against Love

Entering into the intimate cruelty
of correcting one with two,
but not with three.
Taking care of the trunk more than the
fruit
and nesting, if necessary,
on the fallen trunk,
on its bare root.
Insisting sometimes on the fl ower,
but without the theft of cutting it
or seizing its perfume.

And when two or longer correct one,
to retrieve the cruelty of loving against
love
and traveling toward zero,
only in the direction of zero.

Posted: April 13, 2012 at 9:24 pm